Keeping America's Military Edge

Ashton B. Carter

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2001

Article preview: first 500 of 5,302 words total.

Summary:  The U.S. military dominates the world, holding a qualitative edge over friend and foe alike. But that edge may now be slipping. Although the armed forces themselves remain sharp, the institutions that support them are in trouble. Bad management and low morale have weakened America's security establishment and may soon undermine the nation's military power. Washington must make major changes, and fast.

Ashton B. Carter is Professor of Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy from 1993 to 1996. This article draws on Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future, published by MIT Press, which the author edited with John P. White.

THE (NOT SO) GREAT DEBATE

Last fall's presidential campaign rarely ventured into discussions of national defense. When it did, these all-too-brief excursions mostly concerned setting priorities among the almost numberless tasks that should be taken up by the world's leading power. That meant answering several questions: Will China and Russia pose future threats, or can they be cooperatively integrated into the international system? Is preparing to fight two major wars in Korea and the Persian Gulf still the appropriate organizing principle for U.S. forces and budgets? When and how should the United States participate in peacekeeping and conflict prevention?

Such debates focused on the ends of U.S. foreign and defense policy. Although important, they left unanswered an equally fundamental question: whether the United States has the means to implement the policies it decides on. And this lapse was unfortunate, for there is mounting evidence that the necessary means may in fact be wanting. The U.S. national security establishment is becoming deficient, not so much in deciding what to do, as in the ability to get it done. As a result, the new president and his administration may well find their ability to translate policy decisions into results sharply limited. Reversing this trend will depend on the management of means.

At one point, the campaign did touch briefly on means -- namely, when the two sides debated the "readiness" of the U.S. military. George W. Bush charged that U.S. forces were not ready for their current missions. Al Gore replied that the Pentagon was spending a larger fraction of its budget on training and exercises -- the two factors that contribute most directly to readiness -- than ever before. But whatever the merits of their arguments, both sides overlooked a key issue. The "readiness" about which they were arguing was that of today's forces to meet today's threats. A more fruitful debate would have focused on a longer-term version of readiness and a wider view of the defense establishment.

The near-term proficiency of the U.S. military is, in fact, unrivaled. The United States today retains a commanding military edge over all other nations. This advantage is the result not only of large budgets, but also of important managerial and organizational changes made over the years. Conscription was replaced by voluntary service in 1973. Military advice to the president and joint command over military operations were strengthened by the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. And then there was the fundamental decision made by Cold War-era Pentagon managers to rely on a distinctive American asset -- innovative technology -- to overcome the Warsaw Pact's superiority in numbers. This reliance on a technological edge, dubbed the "offset strategy" by former Secretary of Defense William Perry, was essential to ensuring America's overall military edge.

That edge persists today. The long-term readiness of the national security establishment to face tomorrow's threats, however, remains in question. Rather than debate the shape of today's forces, therefore, Bush and Gore could more usefully have proposed the managerial ...

End of preview: first 500 of 5,302 words total.